


a dire need of peace

by birdjay



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, steve rogers gives up the shield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 14:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15633054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdjay/pseuds/birdjay
Summary: peace comes later, after everything goes to shit.this will most definitely not be avengers infinity war p2 compliant, so consider it an AU. this is how I want things to end.





	a dire need of peace

 

“there are two types of tired, i suppose.

one is a dire need of sleep.  
and the other is a dire need of peace.”

 

— mandeq ahmed

 

 

★★★

The shield falls from his arm, the familiar blue, and red, and white slipping and landing with a soft _whirng whirng whirng_ as it finally settles flat on the cement. He lifts the helmet off his head, and tosses it at his feet. His gloves come next, one after the other, landing on the shield, and sliding off its slightly convex shape. He struggles with the top half of his uniform, ripping and wrenching it until it hangs loosely from his waist.

“Steve?” Bucky’s soft voice calls to him from across the way. Concern coats his features. “Steve, are you hurt?”

Steve looks up from his mission, and stares at him blankly.

“No,” he answers, with a quick shake of his head. He’d strip off the rest of his uniform right then, and there, too, if it wouldn’t leave him completely naked. He settles for taking the fabric of the torso and ripping it from the pants, letting it fall from his hands the minute its finally separated from the rest.

Bucky steps forward, wiping his hands on his thighs. There’s blood in the crevices of his metal arm, dripping slowly down his fingertips. It itches. “What’re you doing, Stevie?”

Steve pauses. Anger rushes through him, quickly followed by grief, and relief, and shock. He feels everything at once, emotions pounding behind his eyes until they water. His hands are shaking. “I…”

Bucky closes the space between them, and takes Steve’s hands in his own.

“It’s alright,” He says, voice quiet. “I’m here. We’re here.” He squeezes Steve’s fingers, and pulls until he can press a kiss to the back of his hands. Lips against Steve’s skin, Bucky adds, “It’s over.”

★★★

He is the kind of tired that sleep won’t fix, the kind that aches deep in the bones until you want to cry because the pain just. won’t. _stop_. Awake by sheer strength of will alone, Steve stands in a Wakandan meeting room, somewhere deep within the palace. Someone scraped up the remnants of his uniform and shield, and tried to give it back to him, thinking he’d lost it. Steve refused to take it, walking away with a quiet muttered apology.  The young man followed him, setting the uniform on the table, and scurrying out of the room.

“Where do we go from here?” Someone asks from the other side of the room. Steve barely manages to get his eyes to focus to see that it may or may not be Wanda. He rubs a hand over his face, as she asks, “What do we do now?”

He feels the whole room turn, and look in his direction, like he’s some omnipresent god who has all the answers. Steve forces down the frustration and rage, and stares back at them. “Do whatever you want,” He says, after no one offers any other options. “I’m done.”

The room is quiet for a brief half second, and then every single person decides to talk at once.

“Done with what, Cap?”

“What do you mean _done_?”

“You can’t be done, man!”

“We need you.”

“What do we do without you?”

He waits until they settle down, staring at them with cold fury in his eyes. Hasn’t he given enough? Done enough? Been enough?

“Done with that.” He flings a hand towards the shield. “I don’t want it. I’ve watched too many people I love die. I – I’ve killed too many people. I don’t want – I don’t want the title anymore. I don’t want this _life_ anymore. Give the shield to Sam, if he wants it. Melt it down. Put it in a museum. _I don’t care_.”

The room is silent, except for the minuscule sounds of people shifting or adjusting in their seats. Steve looks across the table, and sees Bucky watching silently. They hadn’t discussed this at all, but when he meets Bucky’s eyes, all he sees is hope.

★★★

“Did you give it up for me?” Bucky asks later, when they’re holed up in the suite T’Challa offered them. They’re stretched out on the bed, the covers still tucked up under the pillows. Steve is on his side, one hand warm on Bucky’s hip. His fingers dance slowly across the soft skin under his shirt.

They’d taken off the rest of their uniforms together, carefully peeling away the bloodied and ripped layers until nothing remained but their own bodies. Once they were only in their bruised and battered skin, Bucky presented Steve with the softest, cleanest clothes he had like they were precious jewels. They dressed each other, careful not to press against the many small hurts that the fight had left behind.

“Yes,” Steve says. “No.” He adds, and then lifts his eyes from where he’s touching. Bucky is staring, steel grey eyes boring holes in him. Steve smiles, for what feels like the first time in what must be days or months or years. “For both of us.”

Bucky grins back.

★★★

“Why are you doing this?” Natasha asks, almost pleading. She stares up at him, fists clenched by her sides. She’s caught him just as he is leaving for food, crowding his space until his back is against a wall.

Steve blinks down at her. God, he is exhausted. With this life. With the people in it. But Natasha, Natasha is different. He owes her. He sighs heavily, closing his eyes for a moment, gathering courage.

“I watched the love of my life die three times, now, Natasha. I’d like to not have to do it again until we’re both old and grey.”

She freezes, and then recovers almost immediately. No one else would have noticed the difference. But there she is, coolly comfortable once more. The mask she has permanently in place pulled over any semblance of familiarity. “Three times?” She questions, tilting her head slightly. “I count only two.”

Steve sighs again. “Fine, I only _saw_ two of the times, but I assure you the pain was there for all three.” He quiets for a moment, and then ticks off things on long fingers, whispering. “Azzano. The train. Thanos.”

He waits for her to react. She doesn’t, just studies him, like he’s some endlessly fascinating thing. And then, “How long?” Natasha asks. “How long have you loved him?”

Steve stares at her, and says simply, “Since I was brought into this world, and until I leave it.”

★★★

“Where do you want to go now?” Steve asks, in the midst of folding shirts. The one in his hands is soft and grey, and he honestly has no idea if it’s his or Bucky’s. Not that it matters anymore. They share just about everything, and not just because all of Steve’s things are in storage somewhere in DC. They’re the same size now, and Steve intends to use that when he can.

Bucky lifts his head from the book he was buried in, tucking his hair behind one ear. He folds over the corner of the page, and closes the book. “I get to pick?” He asks, with a grin.

Steve shrugs, and places the folded shirt onto the pile. He picks up another, and folds it slowly. “Why not?”

Bucky chews on his lip, thinking. His face is as familiar as his own, and yet, so so different from what Steve remembers.

“I want to swim in the ocean,” He says after a while. Steve’s folded several shirts in the time, all navy, grey, or black, and is now matching socks. They’re all black. He’s picking them up randomly, and balling them together without a care.

“That’s easy enough,” Steve says with a smile. “Atlantic or Pacific?”

Bucky scrunches his nose up. “The warmer one?”

“Atlantic, then.”

Bucky shrugs. “Okay.” He flips the edges of his book with one hand, reveling in the sound the paper makes. He lifts his head after a moment, and looks up to watch Steve do their laundry. He hesitates, and then says, “T’Challa said we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted…”

Steve pauses in his matching, considering the offer. This is not a bad place. He could live here, if Bucky wanted to stay. The weather was warm. The people were friendly. It looked nothing like Brooklyn. “Yeah?” He asks, trying to look neutral.

Bucky nods, and smiles. “He said we were always welcome. That he’d make a place for us, after all we did for Wakanda, and the world.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and balls up another pair of socks.

★★★

Sam corners Steve the day before he’s due to leave for DC. They’re in a hallway, somewhere between the kitchens and game room.

“You really wanna give me the shield, man?” Sam asks, brown eyes wide and hopeful. There’s a hint of sadness, too, but Steve doesn’t know if that’s for him or someone else. So many people other than him deserve pity. “Me?” Sam asks again, like Steve didn’t hear him the first time.

“You’re the only person I want to have it,” Steve says, with a smile. Sam’s the only person he’d trust to carry it, the only person who has a strong enough moral compass to not break under the weight of it. “If you don’t want it,” Steve starts, “Put it away. Lock it up. Melt it down. Don’t give it to anyone else.”

He’d understand if Sam didn’t want it. It’s a big thing to hold. To use. To claim.

Sam nods, considering. “I get that. But why _me_?”

“You can carry it,” Steve answers, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. After a beat, it seems Sam still doesn’t understand, so Steve adds, “And I trust you.” ‘More than anyone else’ seems to hang in the air after his words. But its a lie, so he doesn’t say it out loud.

He’d trust Bucky to carry it, but Bucky doesn’t want it. He never wanted it, and Steve will never force him to do anything ever again.

He claps a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and then tugs him in for a full-on hug. Who knows when he’ll see him again, or  _if_ he’ll ever see him again? He pulls away after a second, and just nods. He starts to walk away, and then pauses. He turns at the last second, and adds, “Just remember you can always hang it up again.”

★★★

The sun filters grey through the flimsy curtains, bathing the motel room in a soft morning light. It is early. Too early to get up and start the day, so they stay where they are, wrapped around each other, limbs tangled under the sheets.

“Hey,” Bucky says, voice rough with disuse. They’d fallen into bed sometime in the wee hours of the morning, after a night of gazing up at the stars. Steve had been quietly amazed at their beauty, staring with his mouth agape. It had been years since he’d seen them properly. Not since the war. Not since they’d been alive for the first time.

The stars had been Steve’s pick. Bucky demanded they do his first, not budging even the slightest inch. So they went somewhere in the vast expanse of Montana, purely with the intention of laying flat on their back, and looking up at the night sky.

It made them feel small, to see the millions upon millions of lights up there. It reminded them that out of the entire universe, they are merely two specks of dust on a tiny life-filled rock in the middle of nowhere.

“Mm?’ Steve answers, opening one blue eye to meet Bucky’s grey ones.

“Do you love me?” Bucky asks, blinking once. He presses chapped lips against Steve’s sleep warm shoulder.

Steve opens both eyes, and stares at him. “Do I love you.” He repeats, deadpan.

“Yeah, I mean, we never really talk about it, and I was thinking, so…” He shrugs, and the sheet falls off his shoulder, revealing his metal arm. The light glints off it, sending rainbows towards the ceiling.

Steve takes a breath, considering how to go about this. “Bucky,” He starts, “Loving you is like breathing. It’s a part of me that just _is_. Telling you would be like announcing the sky is blue. Like grass is green, like water is wet.” He pauses, a slight flush spreading across his cheeks. “It’s a truth. No one can change it.”

Bucky’s smile grows until it is stretched across his entire face. “So what you’re saying is, is that you love me…”

“Yeah, y’big jerk, I’m tellin’ you I love you,” Steve says, flinging his arm over Bucky, and yanking him close, and pressing kisses all over his face. It’s mischievous at first, and then suddenly it’s decidedly _not_.

“ _Why_?” Bucky asks, after they come up for air. His eyes glint impishly. He is expecting a joke answer.

Steve scrunches his nose up at him, but answers truthfully. “I think I was born to.”

★★★

Somewhere in a redwood forest in California, Bucky screams, and screams, and screams. They are ripped out of his mouth, and hang in the air between the trunks of the trees. He screams until it feels like his throat is bleeding with it, until he’s gasping for breath on his knees.

He screams for his sister, who died alone of cancer eight years before he remembered who he was.

He screams for his mother, who died thinking he had plunged to his death in the Alps.

He screams for his father, who drank himself to death out of grief.

He screams for Dernier, for Gabe, for Morita, for Dum-Dum.

He screams for Steve, whose hands drip with blood in the name of patriotism and justice.

He screams for himself, for the life he could have had, for the death he was cheated out of.

He screams until Steve gently collects him into his arms, and tugs him to the forest floor. They sit in the dirt. It doesn’t matter. They weep together in the silence of the trees. They came here for this.

★★★

“Does it bother you?” Bucky asks. He’s staring at his metal hand, watching how the light bounces off the plates in his wrist. People have called it beautiful before. He doesn’t think it is.

They’re walking through some art museum that Steve had wanted to see. Bucky was happily following him through the hallways like a duckling, toddling along behind. He doesn’t know art from anything, but Steve explains it to him patiently when he asks.

“Does what bother me?” Steve asks, not looking away from the Van Gogh piece in front of him. He is fascinated by the colors. Steve’s fingers dance at his sides, like he’s sketching. Bucky makes a note to buy him art supplies the next time he can. He hasn’t seen Steve draw since they’d found each other again. He misses it.

“My arm,” Bucky replies, running a real finger over the metal palm.

Steve is yanked away from the painting by Bucky’s words. He turns, and takes the metal hand in his. “No,” he says, sure. The arm is just a part of the Bucky he has now. There is no use in being bothered by it. He traces the plates on the back of Bucky’s hand, and then bends to kiss them. “Does it bother _you_?”

“Sometimes,” Bucky admits, sounding sheepish. “Sometimes I want it off, want to be just…me.”

“That’s not a bad thing, Buck,” Steve responds, a small smile spreading across his face. He runs a finger up to Bucky’s metal elbow, and then back down. “Can you take it off, easily?” He’s never watched him take it off, and isn’t sure if that’s because Bucky can’t take it off, or because Bucky doesn’t want him to _see_ him take it off.

Bucky shakes his head. “No, but…”

“Shuri could probably make one that did?” Steve finishes, with a questioning look.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, with a laugh. He pulls his metal hand away from Steve, and uses his real one to cup Steve’s cheek.

Steve presses his face into Bucky’s palm, and turns to kiss it. “Call her.”

★★★

“You could have taken it off anytime you wanted,” Shuri states, with a laugh. Steve frowns, from his spot beside Bucky’s side. “Did no one tell you how?” She asks, her voice tinny from the cellphone speaker.

“No,” Bucky responds, shaking his head even though she can’t see.

“Hm.” She says, and then, “Do you want me to walk you through it now?”

Bucky quietly gasps. He’d thought they’d have to go back to Wakanda for this, that it would be weeks before he could take it off. “Yes, please.”

Steve holds a hand out, offering silently to hold the phone while Bucky maneuvers the arm. Bucky puts the phone on speaker, and sets it gently in Steve’s palm. He tugs his shirt off by the back of the collar, and lets it pool on the floor of their motel room.

“Ready?” Shuri asks, and Steve can hear her smile in her voice. She is a wonderfully happy person, always ready to help.

“Yes,” They say together.

It’s simpler than Bucky ever imagined. He rotates his arm out and back, and there is a small button underneath. That pops out a plate, which turns into a lever. Bucky pulls it, and the arm unclicks from the socket. After that, it’s easy for Steve to take it, and set it on the dresser.

There is no pain, no discomfort. There is no phantom limb sensation.

He’s himself, again.

Before she bids them goodbye, Shuri mentions that it’s the exact same process to put the arm back on. She says it’s built to go on and off, and that he shouldn’t feel guilty to use or not use it. It’s a tool, not a prison sentence.

★★★

Bucky is circled by a transparent pink pool float, his butt in the water, with his arms swung over the sides so the tips of his fingers can drift through the ocean.

It is quiet here, with very few tourists crowding the beaches. Just the way Bucky wanted it to be. No one has recognized them, no one has hounded them for photographs or autographs or asked their opinion on politics. They’ve been able to just be themselves, not the titles they once wore. It is a kind of peace, Bucky thinks.

The water is warm underneath him, carrying him along the waves as if he weighs nothing. It is as good as he thought it would be, to be here, with Steve.

He squints behind his sunglasses, barely able to pick out the pale pink bulk of him on the beach. He’d been out on the water with Bucky earlier, but it seemed the one thing the serum couldn’t fix was his predisposition to sunburn. Steve had turned a lovely shade of tomato red, and was now huddled under a colorful beach umbrella drinking cocktails. Not that they’d have any effect on him, but still. They looked delicious.

Bucky was planning to join him in a minute or two, but was still basking in the heat of the sun. It was baking him golden brown, slowly ridding him of the pale white that hid beneath his clothes most of the time. He’d been this color before. Back when all he’d cared about was finding enough pennies for candy, and if Steve could come out to play. Before everything.

He lets his head fall back against the float, and stares up at the big blue sky above him. There’s not a single cloud. Nothing but pure blue from horizon to horizon.

How’d they get to be here? How, after everything they had gone through, after everything they’d done, did they get to be together again? Bucky was sure he didn’t deserve it, that somewhere, some _thing_ was plotting to pull them apart again. He knew that one day, it was bound to happen. Through death or otherwise.

But until then, he was going to cling to this with every fiber of his being for as long as he had it.

Bucky stands, toes barely reaching the sand beneath him. He suddenly can’t bare to be apart from Steve any more, which is ridiculous. He knows it is. They are less than a 100 yards away from each other. It doesn’t matter. He wants to feel Steve against him, to touch his skin, and know that he is right there with him.

He swims awkwardly, with the pool float under one arm, back to shore.

“Hey,” Steve says, once Bucky emerges from the ocean. He’s sipping something pink with a wedge of orange on the edge of the glass. Bucky stares at him, dripping on the sand. He shakes like a dog, sending the tips of his hair flying.

“The sky is blue,” Bucky announces, stalking closer to Steve’s umbrella. He tosses the float away, it bounces and settles against a cooler. “Grass is green.” He adds, leaning over Steve. He lays his real hand on Steve’s cheek, nudging him softly. “Water is wet,” Bucky murmurs quietly, just so he can hear. He presses gentle kiss after gentle kiss against Steve’s sunburned face, before adding, “I love you.”

Steve kisses him back.

★★★

**Author's Note:**

> find me at [dreamwidth](https://birdjay.dreamwidth.org/) or [tumblr](http://drclairefraser.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/humdrumvee).


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